Archives for October 2009

From Video Poetry and Video Fictions, courtesy of Richard Kostelanetz, who produced the visual content in 1989, and Seth G. Samuel, who composed and performed the music in 2009. Postscript: Nov. 2 -- A change from the change ... and I doan care if dey mispell Artur's name ... … [Read more...]

Here's the truth, simply stated ... bookstores are suffering from a serious crisis of falling sales. Don't believe a single zero of all those editions claimed to be 100,000! 40,000! ... even 400 copies! just for suckers! Alack! ... Alas! ... only love and romance ... and even then! ... manage to keep selling ... and a few murder mysteries ... rather wanly ... Matter of fact, nothing is selling ... bad times! ... Movies, TV, appliances, mopeds, big cars, little cars, middle-sized cars really hurt book sales ... credit merchandise! imagine! and … [Read more...]

Here's the beginning of a nice little tale of blackmail and paranoia by the late Kurt Vonnegut. It's one of 14 previously unpublished stories in a new collection of short fiction, Look at the Birdie, just out from Random House. I was sitting in a bar one night, talking rather loudly about a person I hated -- and a man with a beard sat down beside me, and he said amiably, "Why don't you have him killed?" "I've thought of it," I said. "Don't think I haven't." "Let me help you to think about it clearly," he said. You can read the rest courtesy … [Read more...]

Did you see this? How could you not? It was frontpage -- front and center above the fold -- the kind of news that sends the mind reeling: Wounded Soldiers Return to Iraq, Seeking Solace. Really. Americans wounded in the Iraq war are being ferried back to the scenes where they were maimed to help achieve psychological closure, the first time such visits have been tried while a war is still in progress. Carl Weissner, author of Death in Paris, his latest thriller, was bemused: Bill Hicks is biting his ass in frustration for having to miss out on … [Read more...]

Malcolm Mc Neill animated Televolution 20 years ago. "I redid it for Charles Darwin," he said the other day, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and to pay tribute to On the Origin of Species. The 19th-century naturalist's masterwork was published in November 1859. Mc Neill's animated cartoon consists of 1859 frames. Televolution originally aired in 1990, in Japan. "The iPhone was science fiction and the Internet had just gotten started," Mc Neill says. "Now wearable data-transmission devices are the norm, biophysical … [Read more...]

Have a look at "The Subliminal Kid," a short, brilliant sequence from Andre Perkowski's "Nova Express." Excerpts of his montage film, a three-hour work-in-progress based on the writings of William S. Burroughs, will be screened tonight at the School for the Visual Arts in New York as part of an ongoing homage to Burroughs, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Naked Lunch. Here is a longer, equally brilliant sequence, "Crab Nebula," from the film. Burroughs himself reads the text. Phil Proctor and Peter Bergman are featured in readings of other … [Read more...]

José Tomás shows in just 37 stunning seconds why he is the last best hopefor bullfighting ... ... and if that doesn't prove it, have a look at these two and a half minutes.¡Olé!Postscript: Oct. 7 -- Yesterday, during arguments in a a free-speech case involving a ban on animal-cruelty videos, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia asked, "What if I am an aficionado of bullfights, and I think, contrary to the animal cruelty people, they ennoble both beast and man? I would not be able to market videos showing people how exciting a bullfight … [Read more...]